Ives and Dvořák

This year marks the 50th and 100th anniversaries, respectively, of the deaths of Charles Ives and Antonín Dvořák.

At 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 24, more than 20 St. Louis musicians — drawn largely from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences — will present A Chamber Music Concert Celebrating Anniversaries of Antonín Dvořák and Charles Ives.

The concert is free and open to the pubic and takes place in the auditorium of the Uncas A. Whitaker Hall for Biomedical Engineering, located on Hoyt Drive, near the intersection of Skinker Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway. For more information, call (314) 935-4841 or email staylor@wustl.edu.

The program begins with a group of works by Ives, including Study, op. 20 for piano, performed by undergraduate Mark Tollefsen; and a set of songs performed by soprano Christine Johnson, a 2002 master’s graduate in vocal performance. Violinist Dana Edson Myers, of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, will then join clarinetist Paul Garritson and pianist Maryse Carlin, both instructors at Washington University, for Ives’ Largo for clarinet, violin and piano.

In addition, Johnson will sing Ives’ At Sea, followed by Adagio Sostenuto, an instrumental piece Ives based on the song, which will feature Garritson on the basset horn, an early version of the clarinet. Johnson also will sing Dvořák’s much-beloved Songs My Mother Taught Me and a setting of the same title by Ives, followed by An Old Song Deranged, an unpublished and rarely performed instrumental version of the Ives piece, which also will feature Garritson on basset horn.

The program concludes with Dvořák’s famed “Serenade for Winds in D minor, Op. 44,”a hallmark piece of music for wind instruments. Dan Presgrave, instrumental music coordinator in the Department of Music, will conduct.

Ives (1874-1954) is widely considered the most inventive American composer of the early 20th century, renowned for his use of dissonance — which had been advocated by his father, a town bandleader with revolutionary musical ideas — and quotation. He studied music at Yale despite conflicts with his traditionalist instructors. (His single-minded dedication also disappointed the athletic department, which felt that he would have been a great sprinter.) Ives never became a professional musician but formed Ives & Myrick, one of the most successful insurance agencies in New York, where he became a pioneer in estate planning. In his spare time, Ives composed well over 200 works, most before the age of 45, after which his health failed.

Dvořák (1841-1904) grew up in a small Czech town not far from Prague. He left school at age 12 to learn butchery, his father’s trade, and to help in the family’s adjacent inn. Recognition of his talents by a teacher led to his study of organ and viola at the Prague Organ School. In the 1880s, his career as a composer was established by the premieres of eight symphonies and performances in England and Russia, the latter at the invitation of Tchaikovsky. In 1891 Dvořák accepted an offer by Jeanette Thurber to become the director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music, where he wrote his famed Symphony No 9 (“From the New World”).